Invasion (7 page)

“Glad you’re feeling better,” Pitt said. “See you around.” Pitt grabbed the wheelchair and pushed it out the door.

“He’s a good guy,” Beau said.

Cassy nodded. “He’ll make a good doctor. He really cares.”

10:45
P.M.

CHARLIE ARNOLD HAD BEEN WORKING FOR THE UNIVERSITY
Medical Center for thirty-seven years, ever since his seventeenth birthday when he decided to drop out of school. He’d begun with the Building and Grounds Department, mowing lawns, pruning trees, and weeding the flower beds. Unfortunately an allergy to grass drove him out of that line of work. But since he was a valued hospital employee, the administration offered him a housekeeping position instead. Charlie had accepted and enjoyed the work. Particularly on hot days he enjoyed it more than being outside.

Charlie liked working on his own. The supervisor would give him a list of the rooms to clean, and off he’d go. On this particular night he had one more room to go: one of the student overnight rooms. They were always easier than a regular hospital room. In a regular room he
never knew what he was going to run into. It depended on the illness of the previous occupant. Sometimes they could be pretty bad.

Whistling under his breath, Charlie cracked open the door, pushed in his mop bucket, and pulled in his cleaning cart. With his hands on his hips he surveyed the room. As he’d expected, it only needed a light disinfectant mopping and dusting. He walked over to the bathroom and glanced in there. It didn’t even look as if it had been used.

Charlie always started in the bathroom. After putting on his thick protective gloves, he scrubbed out the shower and the sink and disinfected the toilet. Then he mopped the floor.

Moving out into the room, he peeled off the bed linens and wiped down the mattress. He dusted all other horizontal surfaces, including the windowsill. He was about to start mopping when a glow caught his eye. Turning to face the bureau, he stared at the valuables safe. Although his mind told him it was preposterous, the box seemed to be glowing as if there was an enormously powerful light inside it. Of course that didn’t make any sense, since the box was made out of metal, so no matter how bright a light was, even if there was one inside, it wouldn’t shine through.

Charlie leaned his mop against the top edge of the bucket, and took a few steps toward the bureau, intending to open the door to the box. But he stopped about three feet away. The glow that surrounded the box had gotten brighter. Charlie even imagined he could feel a warmth on his face!

Charlie’s first thought was to get the hell out of the
room, but he hesitated. It was a confusing spectacle and mildly frightening, yet curious at the same time.

Then to Charlie’s amazement a shower of sparks burst forth from the side of the box accompanied by a hissing sound similar to arc welding. Charlie’s hands reflexively shot up to protect his face from the sparks, but they stopped almost the moment they began. From the point of sparking a luminous red spinning disc the size of a silver dollar emerged. It had seared through the metal, leaving a smoking slit.

Completely stunned by this phenomenon, Charlie couldn’t move. The spinning disc slowly traveled laterally toward the window, coming within a foot of his arm. At the window it hovered as if it were appreciating the vista of the night sky. Then its color changed from red to white-hot and a corona appeared around it like a narrow halo.

Charlie’s curiosity propelled him closer to this mysterious object. He knew no one was going to believe him when he described it. Holding out his hand, palm down, he waved it back and forth over the object to make sure there wasn’t a wire or a string. He couldn’t understand how it was hanging in the air.

Sensing its warmth, Charlie cupped his hands and slowly brought them closer and closer to the object. It was a peculiar warmth that tingled his skin. When his hands got within the corona, the tingling magnified.

The object ignored Charlie until he inadvertently blocked the object’s view of the night sky. The moment he did so, the disc moved laterally, and before Charlie could react, it instantly and effortlessly burnt a hole through the
center of his palm! Skin, bone, ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels were all vaporized.

Charlie let out a yelp more in surprise than pain. It had happened so quickly. He staggered back, gaping at his perforated hand in total disbelief and smelling the unmistakable aroma of burnt flesh. There was no bleeding since all the vessels had been heat-coagulated. In the next instant the corona around the luminous object expanded to a foot in diameter.

Before Charlie could react, a whooshing sound commenced and rapidly increased in volume until it was deafening. At the same time Charlie felt a force pulling him toward the window. Frantically he reached out with his good hand and grabbed the bed only to have his feet go out from underneath him. Gritting his teeth, he managed to hang on even though the bed itself moved. The violence of the sound and the movement lasted only seconds before being capped by a noise vaguely reminiscent of the closing of a central vac port.

Charlie let go of the bed and tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t. The muscles of his legs were like rubber. He knew something was horribly wrong and tried to cry out for help, but his voice was weak, and he was salivating so copiously that any speech was nearly impossible. Marshalling what strength he had, he attempted to crawl toward the door. But the effort was in vain. After moving only a few feet he started to retch. Moments later utter darkness descended as Charlie’s body was racked by a series of rapidly fatal grand mal seizures.

2:10
A.M.

AS FAR AS STUDENT APARTMENTS WENT, IT WAS RELATIVELY
luxurious and spacious, and since it was located on the second floor, it even had a view. Both Cassy’s and Beau’s parents wanted their children to live in decent surroundings and had been accordingly willing to up their kids’ living allowances when they decided to move out of their dorms. Part of the reason for the largesse was that both had stellar academic records.

Cassy and Beau had found the apartment eight months previously and had jointly painted and furnished it. The furniture was mostly garage-sale acquisitions which had been stripped and refinished. The curtains were bedsheets in disguise.

The bedroom faced east which at times was a bother because of the intensity of the morning sun. It wasn’t a bedroom that invited late sleeping. But at a little after
two in the morning, it was dark save for a swath of light that slanted through the window from a streetlight in the parking lot.

Cassy and Beau were sound asleep: Cassy on her side and Beau on his back. As was normal for her, Cassy had been moving at regular intervals, first on one side, then the other. Beau, on the other hand, had not moved at all. He’d been motionlessly sleeping on his back just as he had that afternoon in the student overnight ward.

At exactly two-ten Beau’s closed eyes began to glow, as did the radium dial of an old windup alarm clock Cassy had inherited from her grandmother. After a few minutes of gradually increasing intensity Beau’s eyelids popped open. Both eyes were as dilated as his right eye had been that afternoon, and both eyes glowed as if they were light sources themselves.

After reaching a peak of luminosity they began to fade until the pupils were their usual black. Then the irises began to contract until they had assumed a more normal size. After a few blinks, Beau realized he was awake.

Slowly he sat up. Similar to the way he’d awakened in the hospital, he was momentarily disoriented. Sweeping his eyes around the room, he quickly pieced together where he was. Then he lifted his hands and studied them by flexing his fingers. His hands felt different, but he couldn’t explain how. In fact, his whole body felt different in some inexplicable way.

Reaching over to Cassy he gently gave her shoulder a shake. She responded by rolling over onto her back. Her heavily lidded eyes regarded him. When she saw he was sitting up, she quickly did the same.

“What’s the matter?” she asked huskily. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Beau said. “Perfect.”

“No cough?”

“Not yet. Throat feels fine too.”

“Why’d you wake me? Can I get you something?”

“No, thanks,” Beau said. “Actually I thought you’d like to see something. Come on!”

Beau got out of bed and came around to Cassy’s side. He took her hand and helped her to her feet.

“You want to show me something now?” Cassy asked. She glanced at the clock.

“Right now,” Beau said. He guided her into the living room and over to the slider that led to the balcony. When he motioned for her to step outside, she resisted.

“I can’t go out,” she said. “I’m naked.”

“Come on,” Beau said. “Nobody’s going to see us. It’s only going to take a moment, and if we don’t go now we’ll miss it.”

Cassy debated with herself. In the half light she couldn’t see Beau’s expression, but he sounded sincere. The idea that this was some kind of prank had occurred to her.

“This better be interesting,” Cassy warned as she finally stepped over the slider’s track.

The night air had its usual chill, and Cassy hugged herself. Even so, everything erectile on the surface of her body popped up. She felt like one big goose pimple.

Beau stepped behind her and enveloped her in his arms to help control Cassy’s shivering. They were standing at the railing facing a broad stretch of the sky. It was a cloudless, clear, moonless night.

“Okay, what am I supposed to be seeing?” she asked.

Beau pointed up toward the northern sky. “Look up there toward the Pleiades in the constellation of Taurus.”

“What is this, an astronomy lesson?” Cassy questioned. “It’s two-ten in the morning. Since when did you know anything about the constellations?”

“Watch!” Beau commanded.

“I’m watching,” Cassy said. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

At that moment there was a rain of meteors with extraordinarily long tails, all streaking from the same pinpoint of sky like a gigantic firework display.

“My God!” Cassy exclaimed. She held her breath until the rain of shooting stars faded. The spectacle was so impressive that she momentarily forgot the chill. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. Was that what they call a meteor shower?”